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Monthly Update August 2015

August was a month with ups and downs – the ups were definitely the countless beautiful moments in our two week vacation on Corsica – what a gem, the downs were a sudden market crash on August 24, which lasted only a few minutes. It was a down for me because I had a) not enough cash to go all in on my conservative DGI watchlist (JNJ, HAS, SBUX,etc.) and b) I never could have caught the drop – it was so damn fast.
Fortunately the vacation wasn’t as expensive as I’d imagined – and I’m back at improving my saving rate.

(assuming €:$ 1:1.1 currency exchange rate )

Income

Day Job Paycheck

$3946

Dividend Income

$297

Total Income

$4243

Expense

Total Expense

$1727

Saved Net Income

59%

Nearly 60% saved this month! Even with all the expenses from the vacation.
I think it helps when you’re travelling with a tent and like to go on white sand beaches and climb in the mountains. Because this costs me almost nothing! Making something tasty to eat on a camping stove with all fresh ingredients from the island in front of your tent while enjoying the fabulous sunset? I call this a romantic dinner – which again, costs me not more than eating at home. Of course we tried a fantastic multi-course dinner and ate plenty of super tasty pizza, but when you mix it up with some tent cooking experiences your average food cost is decreasing very fast. And you’ll value and enjoy the pizza even more this way!

But on the other side, some costs will be carried over to September, because I used my credit card sometimes (which will always debit one month later from my bank account).

Purchases

Stock

Units

Price

Date

Cost

OKE

30

$34.92

2015-08-05

$1047.60

ZIOP

100

$7.75

2015-08-24

$775.00

DOC

75

$14.59

2015-08-24

$1094.25

As mentioned, I didn’t go all in on all the opportunities on August 24, because I had only little to give. In the end I added a new position in another (small cap) healthcare REIT and a small biotech company which doesn’t even pay a dividend. But I want to participate in the upcoming CAR T-Cell therapy solutions – I think ZIOP is the way to play this, even when it won’t pay a dividend ever.
So did my negative portfolio balance made me become a total return investor? No, but I don’t want to limit my portfolio to dividend paying companies only. I’d love to add GOOGL at the right price. I have a small selection of stocks on my watchlist which aren’t paying a dividend – ZIOP was on of them and it traded below my target entry price, so I pulled the trigger with only 1.24% of my portfolio (cost) value.
I also added OKE, another energy company which is focused on gathering, processing, storage, and transportation of natural gas and to a small amount of natural liquid gas. As stated in the last report, I’ll continue to add around $1000 per purchase and it feels much better to be able to buy more companies instead of bigger chunks of just one company.

Sells

25 shares of GILD (reduced position)

This one is a bit unfortunate. Seeing the drop in share price of GILEAD, I wanted to add more, but had no cash to do so, so I thought, I’ll sell some shares and buy them back when Mr. Market decides it’s time for a dip again. In hindsight, this is exactly the market timing, I wanted to avoid from the beginning. But on the other side, I made small gain and still got 25 shares of GILEAD. I’ll add again to the position if the time is right – even when it means at a much higher price.

Dividends

MAIN

$12.79

HCP

$24.01

T

$24.37

TIS

$26.78

OHI

$23.38

AAPL

$6.63

HTGC

$52.70

KMI

$20.83

NE

$56.25

STAG

$4.89

CPSI

$13.60

TPVG

$30.60

Total

$296.82

As usual the best part comes last – I’ve collected $297 of dividends! Wow! This is almost as big as my all time high from June, but this time it’s different.
Look at all the quality companies which contributed to my ever growing snowball! Apple, AT&T, OHI, HCP .. I love them all.

Vivianne,
thank you for your visit and comment!
Grilling your own fish on the beach? Wow, this sounds like real fun to me!
No matter what others say – frugal living is looking very romantic to me.
Cheers & good luck to you!
DivRider